NFL commissioner Gary Bettman is hoping to have something to smile about soonJerome Miron/US Presswire

There is renewed hope that the NHL lockout could come to an end by Halloween and enable the league to stage a full 82-game schedule, after owners offered a 50-50 split of revenues with the players Tuesday.

If agreed upon by the roughly 1,000-member players union, the deal would slash the players’ cut of a $3.3 billion pie –— which was 57 percent in the old collective bargaining agreement — and more closely resemble models adopted by the NBA and NFL in recent years that created more of an equal partnership between owners and players.

The proposal was made during an hour-long meeting in Toronto Tuesday between commissioner Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr, executive director of the Players Association, and their deputies, and seemed to press negotiations into fast forward.

While the offer was still being reviewed and would likely produce a counter-offer in the next day or two, Bettman, speaking at a news conference in Toronto, offered a tantalizing timetable for hockey fans impatient with a lockout that is now in its 32nd day.

About 10 days to iron out an agreement, followed by a hurried-up week of training camp, and no preseason games, would allow action to begin 22 days late on Nov. 2, but with time enough for a compressed, but full, season of games, the commissioner said.

“We believe that this was a fair offer for a long-term deal,” said Bettman, adding, “so we have about nine or 10 days to get this all put to bed, signed, sealed and delivered, in order for this offer to be effective and for us to move forward.”

Bettman said the proposal was “50-50 across the board,” but he struck a conciliatory tone, allowing that the union needed time to digest the terms.

While the NBA went to an even-split arrangement with its players to end a labor dispute last year, there has been thought that Fehr, hardened by years on the front lines of Major League Baseball negotiations, would resist redrawing the terms of revenue sharing so sharply in hockey.

“I’ve been looking for a way to get these negotiations jump-started and if this does it, that would be great,” said Fehr Tuesday. “We’ll see, though.

“I would like to believe that it will be an excellent starting point and that we can go forward and see if there’s a deal to be made.”

Among other concessions requested by the owners in the new proposal, a player could declare himself a free agent only at age 28 or after eight years of service, a change from 27 or seven years. And the salaries of players demoted to the minors would count against the salary cap.

In a league that has seen 10- and even 15-year contracts, the owners’ proposal also calls for a measure that would protect owners from themselves — limiting the length of player contracts to five years and limiting salary variability to a 5 percent increase from the first year of the deal. Also, eligibility for salary arbitration would go from the fourth to the fifth year.

One key to the negotiations has been an attempt by the league to redefine the term “hockey-related revenues.” Those include a range of money streams, from gate receipts, concession sales and sponsorships, to lucrative television contracts. In making the offer Tuesday, the league apparently relented on this condition.

The league previously wanted what amounted to a 20 percent swing in how revenues are divided, with the players’ cut going down, from 57 percent to 47 percent, and the owners’ share increasing from 43 percent to 53 percent.

Bettman would not reveal the exact length of a new CBA under the league’s proposal, but he said it would last at least six years.